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What if Walt Disney was the producer of Looney Tunes/Walt Disney Animated Classics/Pinocchio
Pinocchio is a 1940 American animated musical fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Productions and based on the Italian children's novel The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi. It was the third animated feature film produced by Disney, made after the success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and The Wizard of Oz (1939). The plot of the film involves an old wood-carver named Geppetto who carves a wooden puppet named Pinocchio. The puppet is brought to life by a blue fairy, who informs him that he can become a real boy if he proves himself to be "brave, truthful, and unselfish". Pinocchio's efforts to become a real boy involve encounters with a host of unsavory characters. The film was adapted by Aurelius Battaglia, William Cottrell, Otto Englander, Erdman Penner, Joseph Sabo, Ted Sears, and Webb Smith from Collodi's book. The production was supervised by Ben Sharpsteen and Hamilton Luske, and the film's sequences were directed by Norman Ferguson, T. Hee, Wilfred Jackson, Jack Kinney, and Bill Roberts. Pinocchio was a groundbreaking achievement in the area of effects animation, giving realistic movement to vehicles, machinery and natural elements such as rain, lightning, smoke, shadows and water. The film was released to theaters by RKO Radio Pictures on February 7, 1940. It was a critical and commercial success during its initial release. The popularity of the film has led to it being re-released theatrically many times, until its home video release in the 1980s, and the film's main antagonist, Honest John being incorporated into Disney's well-known short series Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies. Critical analysis of Pinocchio identifies it as a simple morality tale that teaches children of the benefits of hard work and middle-class values. Plot The film opens with Jiminy Cricket singing When You Wish Upon A Star as he sits on a bookshelf, on which can be found various literary classics, such as Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland and Pinocchio, which is given a place of prominence. Jiminy Cricket greets the audience and acknowledges that many may not believe that a wish, as the song states, may come true, and, as proof of the message, decides to tell the story of Pinocchio. He slides down the shelf to the book and opens it, beginning his story in a peaceful village at night, which Jiminy states he was passing through. At this point, the viewer enters the story Jiminy is telling through an illustration in the book. The only building from which light seems to emanate is a workshop. Jiminy hops over to the open window and peers in to see a warm fire in a room filled with beautifully carved toys, clocks, music boxes and puppets. He enters the room and warms himself by the fire. He then notices a lifeless marionette puppet, sitting on a shelf. As he is admiring the puppet, he hears someone coming. Crawling up the marionette's strings to hide on a high shelf, he sees a woodworker named Geppetto coming down the stairs with his cat Figaro to finish painting the puppet. Gepetto carefully paints a smile on the puppet's face. Having completed the marionette he gives it the name "Pinocchio" (which literally means "Little Wooden Head") and tests it out by walking it around the workshop. The bells of the clocks that cover the walls of the workshop indicate that it is now nine o'clock, and Gepetto announces that it is time for bed. After he and Figaro have bidden each other goodnight, the woodcutter gets into bed, to notice a Wishing Star through the window. He wishes that Pinocchio would become a real boy, before falling asleep. The wishing star glows brighter, and gets closer to the window; eventually, reaching the workshop, it transforms into a Blue Fairy, who is about to make a fateful spell out of Gepetto's wish. She approaches Pinocchio and brings the puppet to life with a tap of her wand, and his strings vanish without a trace. Pinocchio is delighted and surprised at his ability to move and talk. The Fairy informs him, however, that he is not a real boy yet, and must prove himself brave, truthful, and unselfish in order to become one and learn the difference between right and wrong. After Jiminy hops in to explain to Pinocchio, the Blue Fairy decides to dub the cricket Pinocchio's conscience and leaves, telling Pinocchio to always let his conscience be his guide. Jiminy tries to explain the concept of right and wrong, and, though he is largely unsuccessful, Pinocchio tells him that he wants "to do right". Jiminy then sings Give A Little Whistle, and Pinocchio joins in, falling into a pile of toys by accident. This wakes Gepetto, who cautiously searches the room. On finding Pinocchio moving and talking, he first thinks he is dreaming but is eventually convinced, and delighted, that his 'son' is alive. Winding the music boxes, Gepetto, Pinocchio and Figaro celebrate. Pinocchio is distracted by a candle and, not knowing what it is, sets his finger on fire; Gepetto panics and extinguishes the wooden boy's finger in a water bowl. He decides that they should go to sleep before anything else happens. The next morning, the village is awake. The boys and girls hurry to school, and Pinocchio excitedly follows them, but is approached by an conman fox named Honest John and his companion, Gideon the Cat, who convince him to join a puppet show, despite Jiminy's objections. Pinocchio becomes the puppet show's star attraction as a marionette who can sing and dance without strings. However, when Pinocchio wants to go home for the night, Stromboli, the theater's greedy owner, locks him in a birdcage. Jiminy arrives to see Pinocchio, and is unable to free him. The Blue Fairy appears, and asks Pinocchio why he was not at school. Jiminy urges Pinocchio to tell the truth, but instead he starts telling lies, which causes his nose to grow longer and longer. Pinocchio vows to be good from now on, and the Blue Fairy returns his nose to its original form and sets him free, while warning him that this will be the last time she can help him. As Pinocchio travels home, he meets Honest John and Gideon again. This time, Honest John, after seeing five gold pieces Stromboli had given to Pinocchio before locking him, convinces Pinocchio that if he plants his coins in the Field of Miracles outside an town named Catchfools, they will grow into a tree with gold coins. While Pinocchio travels to said field (despite Jiminy's objections), Honest John takes off ahead of Pinocchio and disguises himself as a bandit while Pinocchio continues on toward Catchfools. The disguised Honest John ambushes Pinocchio, but the puppet escapes to a white house, but he is caught and almost prepared to be hanged in a tree, but is rescued by Jiminy with the aid of an wise owl. When Pinocchio heads out to meet his father, he once again encounters Honest John and Gideon. They remind the puppet of the Field of Miracles, and finally, he agrees to go with them and plant his gold. They finally reach Catchfools, where every animal in town has done something exceedingly foolish and now suffers as a result. Upon reaching the Field of Miracles, Pinocchio buries his coins and then leaves for the twenty minutes that it will take for his gold to grow into gold coin trees. After Pinocchio leaves, Honest John digs up the coins and runs away. Once Pinocchio returns, he learns of the treachery from a parrot. Returning to the Owl's house, Pinocchio discovers he had forgotten his father and returns to the village to find him. Meanwhile, across town, Honest John meets a Coachman who promises to pay him money if he can find naughty kids for him to take to Pleasure Island. Encountering Pinocchio on his way home, he and Gideon convince him that he needs to take a vacation there. On the way to Pleasure Island, he befriends Lampwick, a delinquent boy. Without rules or authority to enforce their activity, Pinocchio and the other kids soon engage in smoking tobacco, gambling, vandalism, and getting drunk, much to Jiminy's dismay. Jiminy searches the now-deserted fairground for Pinocchio. He eventually finds him playing pool with Lampwick, who scoffs that Pinocchio "takes orders from a grasshopper" after Jiminy tells Pinocchio that he has to come home right now and laughs at Jiminy, shooting the cricket down the pool gutter when he admonishes him. Jiminy loses his temper and attempts to leave, quitting as Pinocchio's conscience once again after discovering that Pinocchio is friends with Lampwick, but discovers that the island hides a horrible curse: the boys and girls brought to Pleasure Island are transformed into donkeys and sold into slave labor. Back in the pool hall, Lampwick is still laughing about Jiminy and saying that something is gonna happen to them when he suddenly sprouts donkey ears, a tail and even his head is transformed into a donkey. He then looks into the mirror and panics after witnessing the changes. He pleads Pinocchio for help, but the boy is only able to look on in fright as Lampwick's hands turn into donkey hooves. Lampwick's last words are a frantic call from his mother before he loses the ability to talk and turns into a donkey completely. Losing his mind, Lampwick starts to kick everything in the pool hall, breaking a mirror and a table, and kicking his clothes off. A speechless Pinocchio hides behind a chair, and his panic increases when he himself sprouts ears and a tail, but Jiminy arrives just in time to tell him that Pleasure Island is cursed and takes him to an escape route in order to avoid the same terrible fate as Lampwick. The Owl, who saw Pinocchio going to Pleasure Island, comes and battles the Coachman, who then falls to a waterfall, where he gets chased away by a crocodrile. During the fight, Pinocchio manages to escape. Pinocchio and Jiminy arrive at Geppetto's workshop to discover the old woodcutter has left, along with Figaro. A message from the Blue Fairy as a dove informs Pinocchio of his father's location: after venturing out to sea to find Pinocchio, he had been swallowed by Monstro, an enormous whale. Pinocchio resolves to save Geppetto; though Jiminy tries to warn him against it, he accompanies the boy. Pinocchio and Jiminy meet again with Honest John and Gideon, who were arrested by a police officer (who tells him authorities had also caught the Coachman) in a passing paddy wagon. Honest John begs Pinocchio to vouch for them whereupon Pinocchio tells the police officer that Honest John stole his coins (realizing he was the one who tried to kill him and stole his coins) and tricked him into go to Pleasure Island. The police officer then drives the paddy wagon away stating that what Honest John did to Pinocchio will be the result of a long prison sentence, making Honest John to swear future revenge at Pinocchio, while beating Gideon up. Tying a rock to his donkey tail, Pinocchio plunges to the bottom of the sea and he and Jiminy begin their search for Monstro. Any sea creatures they attempt to ask to flee at the mere mention of Monstro's name. Inside the belly of the whale, Gepetto is in a small boat with Figaro. They have nothing to eat; Geppetto fears that, unless Monstro opens his mouth soon, they will starve to death. Monstro then wakes from his slumber to surprise a school of tuna, who flee in all directions; Pinocchio and Jiminy see Monstro and, frightened, try to swim to escape; Pinocchio is swallowed but the sprightly Jiminy manages to escape. Pinocchio finds himself on Geppetto's boat, and the woodcarver is relieved to see his son again. Geppetto laments that they could not get out of the whale. However, Pinocchio has a plan; gathering some wood, he starts a fire, which causes Monstro to sneeze the boat out. Jiminy jumps on as they fly past. Furious, Monstro chases the boat and smashes it to pieces with his tail. Pinocchio grabs ahold of his father and paddles for a hole in the cliffs beyond as a means of escape. Monstro enraged as ever, continues to chase after them. Pinocchio succeeds in getting through the hole in the cliff just as Monstro crashes into it. Geppetto, Jiminy and Figaro wash up on shore alive, but Pinocchio is seen floating face down in a deep puddle, apparently having died to try to save his father. In Gepetto's workshop, Jiminy, Geppetto and Figaro mourn Pinocchio's death. However, in saving his father, Pinocchio has proved himself brave, truthful and unselfish; the Blue Fairy, from afar, grants him life, and he becomes a real boy (along with the donkey ears and tail disappearing). Pinocchio shows the others that he is alive and a real boy and everybody begins to celebrate once again. While the other characters celebrate, Jiminy, standing on the window ledge, gazes at the Wishing Star and thanks the Blue Fairy. As a reward, a gold medal declaring him an 'Official Conscience' appears on his front. As Jiminy leaves with his new badge, the Wishing Star still shines in the sky, protecting and illuminating the village forevermore. Cast * Dickie Jones as Pinocchio * Cliff Edwards as Jiminy Cricket * Christian Rub as Mister Geppetto * Walter Catlett as "Honest" John Worthington Foulfellow * Mel Blanc as Gideon the Cat, Mr. Owl * Charles Judels as Stromboli, the Coachman * Evelyn Venable as The Blue Fairy * Frankie Darro as Lampwick Production Development It's clear that Walt Disney had been aware of Pinocchio long before deciding to adapt it for animation; Roy E. Disney recalled his uncle reading the story to him before bed. However, Disney does not seem to have considered it for a feature until it was suggested by Ben Sharpsteen. Mrs. K. Evers, a family friend, suggested it for a short subject in a letter of April 8,1935. On his holiday in Europe Disney had met Lo Duca, an Italian journalist, who was similarly enthusiastic that Disney adapt it, urging him that it was 'fit to be developed' in a letter. The title Pinocchio had been registered as a feature in May 1934. Collodi's novel first appeared in serial form in 1881-1882, and was published as a book in 1883. An English translation of story was published in America in 1911. Walt Disney owned the original Italian edition and several different English translations of the novel, and in 1937 Bianca Majolie, a member of the story department, made a new translation. Pinocchio was intended to be the studio's fourth film, after Bambi. However, due to difficulties with Bambi (adapting the story and animating the animals realistically), it was put on hold and Pinocchio was moved ahead in production. Writing and design Unlike Snow White, which was a short story that the writers could expand and experiment with, Pinocchio and Wizard of Oz were based on novels with a very fixed story. Therefore, the story went through drastic changes before reaching its final incarnation. In the original novel, Pinocchio is a cold, rude, ungrateful, inhuman creature that often repels sympathy and only learns his lessons by means of brutal torture. In early story treatments for the film, Pinocchio retains his malice, at one point trapping Figaro's tail in a vice. Emphasis was also placed on the boy's wooden body, as he was teased for his appearance by boys, and sniffed at by a curious dog, on the way to school. The writers decided to modernize the character and depict him similar to Edgar Bergen's dummy Charlie McCarthy, but equally as rambunctious as the puppet in the book. The story was still being developed in the early stages of animation. Early scenes animated by Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas show that Pinocchio's design was exactly like that of a real wooden puppet with a long pointed nose, a peaked cap and bare wooden hands. Early scenes animated by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston show that Pinocchio's design was exactly like that of a real wooden puppet with a long pointed nose, a peaked cap and bare wooden hands. Walt Disney, however, was not pleased with the work that was being done on the film. He felt that no one could really sympathize with such a character and called for an immediate halt in production. Fred Moore redesigned the character slightly to make him more appealing but the design still retained a wooden feel. Young and upcoming animator Milt Kahl felt that Thomas, Johnston and Moore were "rather obsessed with the idea of this boy being a wooden puppet" and felt that they should "forget that he was a puppet and get a cute little boy; you can always draw the wooden joints and make him a wooden puppet afterwards". Hamilton Luske suggested to Kahl that he should demonstrate his beliefs by animating a test sequence. Kahl showed Disney a test scene in which Pinocchio is underwater looking for his father. From this scene Kahl re-envisioned the character by making him look more like a real boy, with a child's Tyrolean hat and standard cartoon character four-fingered (or three and a thumb) hands with Mickey Mouse-type gloves on them. The only parts of Pinocchio that still looked more or less like a puppet were his arms, legs and his little button wooden nose. Disney embraced Kahl's scene and immediately urged the writers to evolve Pinocchio into a more innocent, naïve, somewhat coy personality that reflected Kahl's design. However, Disney found that the new Pinocchio was too helpless and was far too often led astray by deceiving characters. Therefore, in the summer of 1938 Disney and his story team established the character of the cricket. Originally the cricket was only a minor character that Pinocchio killed by squashing him with a mallet and that later returned as a ghost. Disney dubbed the cricket Jiminy, and made him into a character that would try to guide Pinocchio into the right decisions. Once the character was expanded, he was depicted as a realistic cricket with toothed legs and waving antennae, but Disney wanted something more likable. Ward Kimball had spent several months animating a "Soup Eating Sequence" in Snow White, which was cut from the film due to pacing reasons. Kimball was about to quit until Disney rewarded him for his work by promoting him to the supervising animator of Jiminy Cricket. Kimball conjured up the design for Jiminy Cricket, whom he described as a little man with an egg head and no ears. "The only thing that makes him a cricket is because we call him one," Kimball later joked. Casting Due to the huge successes of Snow White and Wizard of Oz, Walt Disney wanted more famous voices for Pinocchio, which marked the first time an animated film had used celebrities as voice actors. He cast popular singer Cliff Edwards, also known as "Ukelele Ike", as Jiminy Cricket. Disney rejected the idea of having an adult play Pinocchio and insisted that the character be voiced by a real child. He cast 12-year-old child actor Dickie Jones, who had previously been in Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. He also cast Frankie Darro as Lampwick, Walter Catlett as the villainous Honest John Foulfellow, Evelyn Venable as the Blue Fairy, Charles Judels as both puppet master Stromboli and Honest John's boss, the Coachman, and Christian Rub as Geppetto, whose design was even a caricature of Rub. Another voice actor recruited was Mel Blanc, best remembered for voicing many of the characters in Disney's famous series Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies. Blanc was hired to perform both Gideon the Cat and Mr. Owl. However, it was eventually decided that Gideon would be mute, so all of Blanc's recorded dialogue was subsequently deleted except for a solitary hiccup, which was heard three times in the finished film. Animation Animation began in September 1938. During the production of the film, the character model department was headed by Joe Grant, whose department was responsible for the building of three-dimensional clay models of the characters in the film, known as maquettes. These models were then given to the staff to observe how a character should be drawn from any given angle desired by the artists. The model makers also built working models of Geppetto's cuckoo clocks, as well as Stromboli's gypsy wagon and the Coachman's carriage. However, owing to the difficulty animating a realistic moving vehicle, the artists filmed the carriage maquettes on a miniature set using stop motion animation. Then each frame of the animation was transferred onto animation cels using an early version of a Xerox. The cels were then painted on the back and overlaid on top of background images with the cels of the characters to create the completed shot on the rostrum camera. Like Snow White, live-action footage was shot for Pinocchio with the actors playing the scenes in pantomime, supervised by Hamilton Luske. Rather than tracing, which would result in stiff unnatural movement, the animators used the footage as a guide for animation by studying human movement and then incorporating some poses into the animation (though slightly exaggerated). Pinocchio was a groundbreaking achievement in the area of effects animation. In contrast to the character animators who concentrate on the acting of the characters, effects animators create everything that moves other than the characters. This includes vehicles, machinery and natural effects such as rain, lightning, snow, smoke, shadows and water, as well as the fantasy or science-fiction type effects like Fairy Dust. The influential abstract animator Oskar Fischinger, who mainly worked on Fantasia contributed to the effects animation of the Blue Fairy's wand. Effects animator Sandy Strother kept a diary about his year-long animation of the water effects, which included splashes, ripples, bubbles, waves and the illusion of being underwater. To help give depth to the ocean, the animators put more detail into the waves on the water surface in the foreground, and put in less detail as the surface moved further back. After the animation was traced onto cels, the animators would trace it once more with blue and black pencil leads to give the waves a sculptured look. To save time and money, the splashes were kept impressionistic. These techniques enabled Pinocchio to be one of the first animated films to have highly realistic effects animation. Ollie Johnston remarked "I think that's one of the finest things the studio's ever done, as Frank Thomas said, 'The water looks so real a person can drown in it, and they do.'" Release Home media Reception Box office Critical reception Live-action adaptation Trivia * To this day, it remains debatable who is the main antagonist: Honest John, Stromboli or the Coachman. * The main song "When You Wish Upon A Star" was parodied in the Family Guy episode "When You Wish Upon A Weinstein", where Peter Griffin sings "I Need A Jew" when he foolishly spends his family's savings on volcano insurance and asks for financial help. Walter Murphy and Seth MacFarlane were sued by the owner of the rights to the song. This song also featured in Wishes at Magic Kingdom and Remember... Dreams Come True at Disneyland. * The film is also parodied in The Simpsons episode "Itchy & Scratchy Land". * Though Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is generally considered to be Walt Disney's most significant contribution to cinema, Pinocchio is considered his greatest achievement and representative of the Disney studio at the peak of its golden age, as well as one of the greatest achievements in animation. It is one of the most critically acclaimed of all the Disney animated features and is considered to be one of the greatest animated films of all time. * Pleasure Island's name may have been a play on Treasure Island, a novel by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, which incidentally inspired the films Treasure Island and Treasure Planet. * Pinocchio is the first and, until the release of The Sword in the Stone, the only Disney theatrical release to include a storybook opening, but leave out a storybook closing. * This is the second Disney animated classic to have the 2006 Walt Disney Pictures logo at the end of the movie, on current releases. * This is one of few Disney's movies that lacks timelessness when it goes to audio, due to the fact that old 1930s language phrases that aren't used in common speech anymore are used in it, such as "bloke", "swell joint", "scrape", or "hopping to it", the most infamous example being "Actor's life is gay" in lyrics of "Hi-Diddle-Dee-Dee". Back in 1930s and up to 1950s, the word "gay" meant happy. It also applies to some other language versions.